


Water Wings

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Dean Winchester, Aquaphobia, Castiel (Supernatural) Feels, Castiel Feels Guilty, Dean Doesn’t Want Anything To Happen To His Family, Dean Winchester Being an Asshole, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Castiel, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Gen, Guilty Castiel (Supernatural), Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Panic Attack, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Takes Care of Castiel, Worried Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Cas is the only person able to access a narrow underwater passage that holds a weapon capable of hurting Chuck, but he doesn’t know how to swim.Sam starts to teach him, but that brings some unaddressed issues to the surface right when they’re all already struggling with hurt, anger and guilt.





	Water Wings

**Author's Note:**

> This, I thought, was just going to be a cute little story for a prompt where Sam had to teach Cas to swim.
> 
> Dean is an asshole in this story, still angry at Cas, angry over Jack and Mary, and scared for his family and the world and as we know that doesn’t bring out his emotional best. Not justifying, it’s just where he is, and unfortunately Cas bears the brunt.
> 
> Sam does better by Cas, but the swimming lessons bring up past mental and emotional trauma, inducing a panic attack and putting Cas in an even worse mental/emotional state than before.

Elias was too old to crouch, but he got as close to the edge, and the water’s surface, still as black glass, as he could, and waved his hand at it.

“You boys want that rib bone, you better find a way to turn yourselves into fish.”

Dean had a sour comeback on the tip of his tongue, but heeded the warning look his brother shot him; the crotchety retired hunter had accommodated their request for help, so far, if grudgingly, but he could turn off the tap at any moment, and they couldn’t afford to leave empty handed.

“The passage is definitely too narrow for tanks?” Sam dropped to squat right at the edge, peering into the darkness at the outer wall of the reservoir.

Elias sucked at his teeth again, a habit that was really starting, along with his lay-down-and-die attitude, to piss Dean off. “Yep. Trust me, son. I was maybe seventeen when I killed that son of a bitch, and I saw it drag itself into that tunnel, and die right in the middle.

“And the next day, the water turned black, and not a one of those boffin white coat types they sent down here could work out why.”

That part, Dean knew was true; before they drove out here, he and Sam had spent weeks tracking down any mention of the _Illigari_ , a kind of vampire/mer species that had a particular reputation (confirmed by a quick phone call to Cas, who was helping Rowena clear out a nest of Chuck’s monsters), and that had led them to this place and its weird urban myth about a long disused reservoir where the water was the colour of night, and nobody knew why.

The instant decomposition of an illigarium explained it, but nobody could fit into the tunnel to find the bones, and would probably just have thought they were animal remains anyway even if they had gotten in there.

So now they had a lead on a weapon that couldn’t _kill_ Chuck, but could render him vulnerable enough for something else to do the job, but that weapon was unreachable.

Elias left them to stare in frustration at the water, and Dean let him go.

He sank down to sit next to his brother, and picked up a small stone, which he pinged off the reservoir wall.

It hit the water, and there was barely even a ripple.

“Guess its magic is still going strong,” he said.

Sam nodded. “Which proves its body definitely is down there.”

“Yeah, where only Ariel could reach it. And I don’t know about you, Sammy, but I don’t have any mermaids on speed dial.”

Sam turned to him, suddenly excited.

“But we do have somebody _who doesn’t need to breathe_.”

++

By the time the brothers returned to the bunker, driving as fast as they dared, Cas had managed to heal Rowena, and she’d used her magic to bolster his Grace.

He still wasn’t fully there yet (he had a bite in the curve where his neck met his shoulder, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding for at least a few days afterwards, even when Dean stitched it out of desperation) but he was strong enough for Rowena to leave him in their care while she went to meet with some of her sister and brother witches, to try and warn them what was coming, and rally them to the cause.

Dean and Sam didn’t mention the reservoir while Cas was still injured. It wouldn’t be fair, since the angel wasn’t fit enough to go swimming a few hundred yards in cursed water and they both knew that wouldn’t stop Cas insisting they immediately go try.

He was taking this thing with Chuck personally, too personally, in their opinion.

But if it was John out there, ripping up the world, they both knew they’d feel the same.

And at the end of it was the knowledge Cas would have to help kill his own dad, even if Chuck was the textbook example of a deadbeat, abusive, neglectful parent.

The whole situation was already fucked up, but now they were faced with also having to ask Cas to go through something pretty unpleasant to get a weapon to use against his father.

Once the angel’s bite wound had healed over, and Dean removed the stitches, they had no more excuses to avoid telling Cas what they wanted him to do, and that was where the trouble started.

++

“Let me get this straight,” Dean said, and he knew he sounded like an asshole, but _come on_. “You can’t _swim_?”

Cas glared at him, and that should have gotten Dean to back off a little, but he was the king of doubling down, and knew it, so he just glared back.

“We _fly_ ,” Cas said, and there was a sharp look of pain in his eyes for a micro-instant, that anybody else might have missed, but not Dean. “We’re creatures of the Ether; why would we need to know how to swim?”

Sam caught Cas’s attention, gently, and Dean rolled his eyes, mouthing _children of the Ether_ at the angel’s back; whether Cas knew, or not, Sam did, though he didn’t react since Cas was looking at him.

Dean knew he’d be hearing about that later, but seriously? The angel was older than anybody alive on the damn planet, and he didn’t even know the doggie paddle?

“Cas,” Sam said. “What about...muscle memory? Maybe Jimmy knew how to swim and…”

He trailed off, face flushing, and Dean felt like giving him a slow clap. Way to go, Sam.

“He might have,” Cas said, “but this isn’t his body, Sam. It’s mine, so even if he could swim….”

“Right.” Sam looked helplessly at Dean, but he held up his hands. Sam’s Sasquatch foot was in his Sasquatch mouth, and what the hell was he supposed to do about it?

“Guess we’re looking for something else, then,” he said. He shook his head, unable to believe there was a weapon to help them deal with Chuck and none of them could get it, because the humans couldn’t hold their breath long enough to swim to where it was, and the angel who didn’t need to breathe also didn’t know how to swim.

It was just typical of their luck, and he grabbed the book on magical weapons, where they’d found the first hints of a way to attack Chuck, and headed for his room.

This might have been standard for them, nothing ever been simple, or easy, but that also meant they were used to it.

They’d find something else, and Dean just had to hope it was before Chuck burned the whole damn world.

++

Sam glared after Dean. He got his brother was frustrated, and scared, and worried, and that it was still not so long after Mary, but he was getting a little tired of his asshole setting.

After so many years as part of their family, he knew Cas knew how Dean worked, and that even when he said the worst things to them it came out of where he was, emotionally, but that didn’t mean that either of them should have to take it.

The thing was that while Sam would tell Dean where to shove his attitude, and had ended up punching his brother in the face more than once when Dean just kept it up, he knew Cas would just take it.

And blame himself for something he did yesterday or last week, or two years ago, thereby justifying Dean’s behaviour.

He was the righteous man, after all, and the problem with that was even when Dean knew he needed checked, Cas…

Cas was hobbled when it came to dealing with him, and let himself be pushed past his line and sometimes even pushed over.

“He’s just scared,” he offered, as Cas stood there, shoulders slumped, staring forlornly after Dean.

“He has reason,” Cas said. “My father will kill the world out of spite and childishness. But we both know he’s right to be disappointed in me, Sam.”

Oh, no. “He’s _not_ ,” Sam insisted. “He isn’t disappointed in you, Cas, and even if he was, he’d be wrong. Nobody knows anything they haven’t learned, right? And commanding a heavenly garrison probably didn’t involve doing a couple of lengths of the pool.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Sam wanted to cram them back in. Way to go again, reminding Cas of something else he’d lost due to being associated with the Winchesters.

When had he gotten this clumsy with his words and Cas’s feelings? 

But Cas didn’t seem overly upset; maybe it had been so long, now, that he’d made his peace with what choosing them over Heaven had cost him.

“It’s a skill I wish I had learned; would have learned if I’d known we’d need it so badly.”

Sam quickly pulled Cas into his arms, eager to reassure him when the angel could obviously use it, but something in Cas’s words stuck with him.

 _I wish I had learned_.

Cas was smart. He’d picked up being human on his own, with absolutely no help from them, survived in a world that had tried damn hard to chew him up and gulp him down.

He knew every language on the planet, had a few thousand years of lore and strategy and learning stored in his head.

And he was also a quick learner.

“Cas,” he said, noting that Cas was kind of just standing there, like as much as he wanted that hug he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

 _Thank you, Dean_.

“Sam.”

“You know you’re never too old to learn, right?”

And this was something Sam had already decided he’d keep Dean out of. It was his big brother who’d taught Sam to swim (John being too bark and bite when Sam didn’t pick it up right away) but, while Sam knew Dean could teach Cas and teach him well, there was something sharp between them just now.

He hated to even think it, but maybe Cas wouldn’t be able to feel at ease enough being taught by Dean.

Confidence was a big part of it; the learner had to have it in themselves, and the person teaching them was usually the person who had to put it there, and right now Sam didn’t think Dean was up to that.

He hoped at some point that both his brother and their angel find a way past the thing with Jack, and what he’d done; it hurt, there was no denying it. 

But they had all known Jack was off the rails, and it wasn’t fair of Dean to try and put it all on Cas.

Sam knew, if he had a way to unpack everything going on in Dean’s head right then, he’d find it wasn’t just about Jack, or their mom, but Dean was clammed up tight. As usual, it would probably take a close call or Dean just working through it in his own time, before he could stop being an ass.

In the meantime, teaching Cas to swim would solve two issues; it’d distract Cas from Dean, and hopefully get the angel to start having some faith in himself again, and it would give them a way to get that rib bone from the reservoir.

After that...well, Sam guessed they’d see.

++

The first thing he had to do was get Cas some swimming trunks. He took Cas into town the next day, and followed the angel as he stared at the variety of colours and styles, before finally settling on a pair of dark blue trunks.

Sam figured they wouldn’t need goggles, so he took Cas to the cashier and paid up before driving them back towards the bunker.

Maybe a couple of months after they’d moved in, and neither they or the world were in imminent danger, Sam had started to explore, both the bunker and the surrounding area.

He’d been amazed to find the small lake, tucked away and clearly man made, to the back of their new home (some plans he’d found after confirmed the lake was a source of hydro power for the bunker, though he wasn’t sure how) and once he was sure it was safe he’d taken full advantage.

Dean had even joined him, sometimes, but right now Sam and Cas had it to themselves, and he led the angel down the grassy bank and into the shallow water’s edge.

“Okay, I guess before we start, I gotta ask, Cas. You’re not scared of the water, or anything?”

Cas looked out towards the deeper parts of the lake, and Sam thought he saw a little unease there.

“I promise, I’ll keep you safe,” he told the angel. Just because Cas couldn’t drown didn’t eliminate the potential for an unpleasant experience.

Cas looked back to him, nodded. “I’m...wary,” he admitted. “But as long as you’re nearby.”

Sam grinned so hard he nearly split his jaw. “I’ll stick close. So we probably want to start with getting you to float.”

Cas cocked his head to one side. “Float?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. You know, Cas, I think you’ll like this part.”

He wasn’t wrong.

++

Every morning for the next four days, Sam took Cas out early to the lake.

If Dean noticed their joint absence, he didn’t ask; they only saw him briefly for lunch and dinner, and the rest of the time he was in his room, along with whatever books he’d taken from the stacks (Sam kept noticing gaps among the perfectly ordered volumes of lore).

So Dean was still trying to find another way to stop Chuck, but Sam also suspected he felt guilty over mocking Cas and didn’t know how to fix it, or take it back.

Apologies were for other people, or a level of desperation Dean hadn’t yet reached, and Sam hated that his brother was in his room, gnawing away at himself over this and his inability to say sorry until somebody was hurt, or dying, or Dean felt he’d punished himself enough.

Still, there was no way Sam could get Dean there any sooner, he knew from experience, and at least Cas wasn’t resistant to Sam’s help, so he focused everything he had on their angel.

And Cas rewarded Sam with some rapid progress.

By the end of that fourth session, he was sharp and fast, crossing the lake one side to the other in a time that would probably have smashed some existing records.

He swam like he fought; precise, focused, every movement controlled and efficient, and it was something of a joy to watch knowing he’d taught Cas to do that.

It wasn’t quite the same as having the angel swim through a narrow pitch black, underwater tunnel, searching for a narrow rib bone among who knew what other junk, but Sam knew Cas could do it.

So their next lesson was just that, showing Cas how to swim beneath the surface.

And that was where they ran into problems.

++

Cas sat on the grassy bank, shivering despite the large towel Sam had slung over him, and the hunter’s arm holding tight around his shoulders.

He should have been honest with Sam at the beginning, when he’d been asked if he was afraid of the water.

Technically, he hadn’t lied. He was wary of the water, for what would probably seem a stupid reason to Dean, and possibly even to Sam, but he’d managed and surprised himself by doing so.

Having someone he trusted close by had helped.

But swimming on the surface of the water was much different to being _under_ it.

To being submerged, even when he knew all he had to do was surface and that nothing was holding him under.

Even though he knew that, it didn’t stop the overwhelming panic that had seized him immediately and sent him thrashing to the bank and then clambering out as if something was after him.

He didn’t know who’d gotten the biggest fright, himself or Sam, but the hunter had immediately called a halt to the lesson and hurriedly followed him to the bank and made sure he was alright.

He also hadn’t quizzed Cas on what prompted his sudden panic, but Cas knew he owed Sam an explanation, especially since it was likely this meant he wouldn’t be able to retrieve the bone.

And it also meant Sam had wasted the hours he’d spent here trying to teach a foolish angel to swim.

It was just...the moment the water closed over his head, he was somewhere else, with a hungry chittering sound in his ears and sharp teeth biting him, but the pain was from something else, the memory of his stupidity, his lack of foresight, and how he had broken his family and endangered the world and would never be able to save them.

It took Sam urging him to breath, to settle, for Cas to realise he wasn’t out of it; Sam had one hand on his chest, and had grabbed Cas’s hand and put it on his own, urging the angel to mimic him.

He was shaking and confused and _lost_ , but he followed Sam’s instructions, and slowly everything slipped back to where it was, what it was:

Just a lake.

No leviathan in it, or in him.

Sam next to him, whole and well, not with a cracked wall and damnation searing through his head.

The world...the world was in danger again, but this time…. This time, the threat hadn’t been crafted by them.

Sam turned enough to rest his forehead against Cas’s temple.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” he murmured. “But I’m here if you want to.”

Something in his voice suggested to Cas that Sam had realised what had driven him out of the water in terror, but maybe…

Maybe Sam was right, and talking would help. Or maybe it wouldn’t; Cas had let them both down so many times, and now he was doing it again.

At any rate, Cas knew he had to find a way to deal with this, because they needed that rib, and he knew of no other way for them to get it.

++

Dean was only half awake when Sam poked his head around the bedroom door at stupid o’clock that morning, but his sneaker still whacked his brother in the shoulder before tumbling to the floor.

“Nice,” Sam bitched, and came in anyway. “Need you to talk to Cas.”

Dean groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. Okay, yes, he knew he’d been an asshole to the angel, and that it wasn’t just about the swimming thing.

Being worried about him because he got banged up on that hunt didn’t change the fact that Dean was still mad at him.

Cas had known Jack killed that snake and said nothing, and look where that had led them.

Except he knew also that they’d all seen signs of Jack turning into something deadly, and as usual for him, Dean, he’d wanted to sugar coat that as long as possible.

It had hurt too much to face the prospect of someone he loved turning dark on him again, especially when...again...he didn’t know how to stop it.

And fuck, he hadn’t meant what he’d said to Cas about being dead to him. He’d die to keep that angel safe, and yet somehow those words had come out of him like poison and he’d seen how bad they had hurt one of the (now) only two people in the universe he still had alive to love and care about.

But he couldn’t take it back, didn’t know how, and so somehow avoiding it and the angel seemed like a better approach than either saying something else hurtful (which he’d already done, yay for him) or just standing there and finally clapping Cas on the back or cooking burgers that he wouldn’t eat, or _something_.

And now here Sam was, deciding Dean had had enough time to sweat and now it was time to talk.

Dean wondered if his brother had also brought a script, but then Sam was tugging at the pillow and forcing him to turn over.

“What the fuck,” Dean grumbled, and whacked his brother with the pillow as he sat up.

“Something’s up with Cas,” Sam said, and Dean nearly knocked him over as he launched himself out of the bed.

“Not physically,” Sam hurried on, but he still had to grab at Dean to stop him just running for the door. “Look, I’ve been teaching him how to swim.”

Dean turned on his brother. “And what went wrong?”

Sam glared at him, hackles raised over the accusing tone. “Nothing _went wrong_ , dammit, Dean. We were trying to _do_ something.”

Dean didn’t miss the unspoken conclusion to that sentence: _instead of hiding in our rooms_.

“And what did you do?”

Sam sighed. “Look...maybe Cas isn’t over some of the shit that’s happened to him as much as we thought.”

Some. A lot of shit had happened to the angel, and Dean knew he’d been the person responsible for some of that shit which was why he didn’t want to ask and didn’t want to hear.

But he was gong to anyway.

“Which particular shit?”

Sam looked as about as happy as Dean, then, but he held his ground. “The Leviathan.”

Of course. Dean slumped down on the bed, and reached for his right sneaker, while Sam picked up the other one from where it had been tossed and handed it over.

Then he got up, and followed Sam through to the library.

Except...Cas wasn’t there.

++

Dean barely said two words to Sam during the car ride.

He just kept side eyeing him, expectantly, and Sam tried Cas’s cell again, again, again.

It went to voicemail each time, like Sam expected, because if Cas answered then the angel would have to deal with two worried (and angry and distressed) humans, and one of them would be ordering him to pull his ass over to the side of the road and wait right there for them.

Because they both knew where Cas was going. Only one destination made sense, and Sam kept picking over everything he’d said and done in Cas’s presence the past few days to see if he’d somehow driven Cas to this.

He was doing the same for all the interactions between Cas and Dean that he was aware of, and figured Dean was doing the same right then.

Something had made Cas decide to head for the reservoir, by himself, and while Sam knew Cas couldn’t be hurt by some water, he also couldn’t get the angel’s panic out of his head.

What if something went wrong? Maybe he got trapped in the tunnel - if that happened, they’d be unable to reach him. Maybe the tainted water was toxic to angels and they’d find him floating face down on the surface.

Maybe…

He shook his head, forced himself to stop.

They weren’t that far behind Cas, Dean driving as fast as he could but still not able to spot the truck anywhere ahead. Cas hadn’t had that much of a head start, but then maybe he’d taken another route, or just maybe he wasn’t going to the reservoir at all.

Had he...had he left?

Something cold felt lodged in Sam’s chest, then. Had he…. Did the swimming thing something make Cas think he wasn’t worthy of being in their family? That he was letting them down, and so had to go?

Or was it…. Sam risked a side glance at Dean. Things hadn’t been great between them, recently, another trough in their relationship, and Cas had probably worked out that Sam would approach Dean over the panic attack in the water.

Had he taken off before Dean would have a chance to speak to him? Maybe Cas had expected another attack, more accusations or mocking, and decided he’d had enough.

If he’d seen the way Dean nearly broke something getting up fast when he thought Cas was hurt…

But that was the problem. 

Cas hadn’t seen that. He maybe knew on some level that Dean cared (God, Sam hoped he knew, hoped he knew they both did) but when all Dean showed him was the side that apparently _didn’t_ , it had to be hard to believe it was always just down to Dean’s anger and pain.

Had Cas decided for once to get out before getting cut up by Dean?

Sam wouldn’t have blamed him. But whether Cas had gone on by himself because he didn’t want to disappoint them, or had left because he’d just had enough, it said a lot about where the angel was, mentally and emotionally, right then, and even more about their relationship with him.

Sam just hoped they had a chance to try and fix both.

++

When they reached the reservoir, Dean found himself torn between hoping Cas’s truck was there, and that it wasn’t.

If it was there, then bingo - they’d found their angel; on the way there, he’d had Sam try the GPS on Cas’s phone, but it was switched off, hence the voicemail, so they had no way of knowing if Cas was actually heading out here.

If they’d arrived, and found no sign of the angel, that would have meant Cas was just gone, and they’d have had no way to find him.

But seeing the truck parked near the water…

That meant Cas had gone in there alone, and even if he’d already known how to swim, even if there hadn’t been that episode in the lake behind the bunker, Dean would never have let Cas try this unsupervised.

He pulled in right next to the truck, and they both jumped out.

Sam rested his hand on the hood of Cas’s vehicle. “Still warm.”

Of course. Cas couldn’t have had that much of a head start, just enough that, combined with traffic and not knowing which way he’d actually went, they’d been unable to catch him up.

Dean ran to the edge of the reservoir and peered hopelessly into the water.

It was as still as before, like the surface had turned to ice, and just as black and impenetrable.

But Cas had to be in there.

Dean kicked off his trainers, pulled his Henley over his head.

“Wait, what the hell,” Sam said, grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the water.

“He’s in there.”

“I know.”

“Why the hell is he _still_ in there?”

Sam kept hold of his arm. “You know how long that passage is; Elias told us, and maybe he’s struggling to find the rib. He could just be searching.”

“Or maybe that water’s contaminated.”

“You don’t think kids have been up here swimming in it? Thinking it’s cursed probably just doubled the attraction. There’s not a single report of anybody drowning or dying in the water, Dean, and Elias would have mentioned if there had been.”

“Maybe it’s just not toxic to _humans_.”

Sam didn’t have an answer for that, and went back to the car to grab flashlights, their first aid kit, and some towels from the trunk.

And then, with zero warning, Cas broke the surface.

He flailed, a little, looking almost as panicked as when he’d exploded out of the water back by the bunker, but then they were both yelling at him, to him, and when he saw them, he settled, a little.

Enough to swim towards them; by the time he’d reached the side, they were both there to heave him out and Dean had him by the shoulders.

The angel was just wearing his boxers, and he was pale and shivering (neither good signs, Sam figured, since an angel shouldn’t be affected by cold water) and his hair was flattened against his skull.

But he had the rib, the curved bone gripped tight in one hand.

He held it out to Dean, and Dean looked down at it, and then back up at Cas, and just pulled the angel into his arms.

“Assbutt,” he muttered, and Sam wasn’t sure whether to laugh or slap them both upside the head.

He settled for grabbing the biggest towel, draping it around Cas’s shoulders, and watching as Dean finally let the angel go long enough to dry him off.

And then…

Then they went home, because they had an angel to care for, to settle again, and a way to hurt God, and that just left finding a way to actually kill him.

They’re killed Death, after all. God was just the next level up.


End file.
